Children and adults alike love learning about dinosaurs and I hope you’ll enjoy reading my latest collaboration with Andrew Plant, The Little Dinosaur. Since this is a review site looking at how picture books can be used to introduce science themes, I’ve decided to include it here. Since I cant really review my own book however, I’d like to point you to some other worthy review sites.

The Little Dinosaur sits apart from other dinosaur books, which are usually about North American or European dinosaurs. In the Cretaceous, Australia was part of a land mass called Gondwana and the climate was quite different to what we experience today. Below the Antarctic Circle, Australian dinosaurs had to search for food in ice and snow.

Dinosaurs fit into a number of places in the curriculum, both from the point of view of biological sciences and earth and space sciences. There is the opportunity to look at adaptations and environment and how the features of these little polar dinosaurs suit them to their enviroment. Over time the earth changes a great deal, Australia moves North and new types of plant and animal life emerge. The book is in two parts, the dinosaur becomes a fossil and we follow the steps that scientists take to recreate the past based on clues hidden in the rocks. It therefore fits into Science as a Human Endeavour and is a practical application of Science Inquiry skills.

There are links to teacher’s notes on my website and a crossword puzzle and wordsearch. Also some links to useful websites.

Follow up activities could include making fossil imprints of leaves or shells in dough, plaster of paris etc. I’ve used something called paper magiclay because it doesn’t leave a mess. You can download or make stencils of dinosaurs and create a Cretaceous scene.

Invisible Me is the third in a series of stories about Stripey, an ’emu with attitude,’ created by Western Australian artist/author Wendy Binks. The first book in the series, ‘Where’s Stripey,’ was winner of the WA Premier’s Book Awards, Children’s Section.

Stripey lives in Fair Dinkum flats with his parents Crikey and Sheila and wonders why he has stipes but his parents don’t. His sister, Leggy, tells him it’s to make himself invisible when he’s in a special place so Crikey sets off to find that special place. In this tale about camouflage and habitat, Stripey meets other Australian animals along the way, including a red kangaroo hidden amongst the rocks, a goanna on a tree and an echidna on a back porch. In a delightful twist, Stripey thinks he’s found his special place with humans …but I won’t spoil it by telling you. In the end, however, Stripey does find his own special place out in the bush where he is safe and loved.

Binks’ illustrations are cheeky, vibrant and lots of fun. The characters have their own voices and the subject is treated in a light-hearted way. Children and adults alike will enjoy the illustrations and looking for the hidden characters. Binks has included interesting facts at the end of the book. about the animals in her book; emus, echidnas, western ground parrots, red kangaroos, flying foxes and goannas. As support materials Binks has downloadable colouring sheets available at her Stunned Emu Designs website and she is available for author visits to schools. Linking the science themes in the book with some artwork would keep students engaged for hours.

Mark Wilson is an artist/illustrator/author and passionate conservationist. He has written and illustrated a number of books for children with strong environmental themes. In ‘Journey ofthe Sea Turtle,’ he tells the story of a loggerhead turtle, from birth to migration and back to the beach where she was born. When she returns, she finds that there is nowhere to lay her eggs. She becomes tangled in netting and struggles to survive. Finally the sight of shadow birds in the sky lead her to a new beach.

The story deals with loss and degradation of habitat and the threats posed to turtles from human activities. In his teacher’s notes, Wilson is keen to point out the significance of turtles as a keystone species and their importance in the marine food chain. You can contact Mark for copies of his teacher’s notes.

The book also delves into the life cycles of the turtles and the predator/prey relationship with the ‘shadow birds,’ sea birds which prey upon the young turtle hatchlings as they emerge from their nests and head for the ocean. The turtle knows that it is time to lay her eggs by the temperature of the sea. At the end of his book, Wilson highlights the point that ‘it is estimated that only one in a thousand baby loggerhead turtles form one nesting beach near Bundaberg in Queensland will survive life at sea, to return in thirty years as a nesting adult.’

I love the structure and colour of the illustrations in this book. On some pages, the texture of the canvas for the paintings clearly shows through. On others there is a mixture of pencil sketches and colour. I like the way Wilson has shown the passage of time with the pages illustrating the hatchlings development from eggs. The blues, yellows and greens blend to make the ocean seem as if it will spill out of the page.

Although the text is simple and able to be understood by the very young, there are also more complex issues here which could lead to further work on habitat, lifecycles, food chains and the requirements of living things.

The Little Dinosaur will be released in June 2012…and of course there are lotsof links with primary science and in fact secondary science. .

In a time before australia existed, a little dinosaur roamed the Antarctic forests. Time passed and the world changed, but the discovery of the little dinosaur’s leg bone millions of years later means she is not forgotten.

A picture book about Australian polar dinosaurs which will delight and inspire dinosaur lovers of all ages.

Details of the launch will be available via my facebook page.

Hope to see some of you there.

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Platypus Deep is the story of Orni the platypus and his search for a new place to build a den when his old home is destroyed by a savage storm.Author and conservationist Jill Morris likes to make plays on words with the names of her characters. The scientific name for a platypus is Ornithorhynchus Anatinus and upstream from Orni lives Anatina, feeding her babies; while downstream lives the old and fierce platypus, Rhyncus. A good way to introduce your students to the idea of scientific names and that they are important because there can be so many common names for the same thing.

Morris gives us a clear sense of the habitat of the platypus in her opening pages; In the ‘secret pool on a quiet creek,’ we meet sandpaper figs, fig parrots, butterflies, frogs, echidnas and yabby’s, which all share the pool with Orni. We learn what Orni eats and also the food web relationships between the other inhabitants of this little ecosystem. Later a dingo visits the pool and we get a sense that there are predators even further up the food chain.

Morris also shows us some of the adaptations and characteristics of the platypus and other animals. Anatina feeds her babies upstream, clearly mammalian, the snake soaks up the sun for warmth, and Orni and Rhyncus battle with their posion spurs as they compete for the pool downstream.

There is also a sense of changing landcape here, which fits in with the Earth and Space Sciences stream. There is the rapid change due to the storm, geological changes over long periods of time and the changes caused by the impact of humans and pollution. Morris sends a clear message here and her inner back cover states that ‘in 2005 the people of Maleny protested unsuccessfully against the building of a supermarket on the bak of Obi Obi Creek, the habitat of a large colony of platypuses. Illustrator Heather Gall lives near Maleny in Queensland.

Morris doesn’t let the science get in the way of the story-line and so it’s an enjoyable read on it’s own merits. It’s also a book that could be used on a number of different levels, even with older children as an exercise in drawing food webs.It’s particularly relevant at level 4, looking at interactions between organisms. Local and authentic content makes the exercise much more worthwhile.

Jill Morris has produced a number of books with conservation themes through her Greater Glider publishing. A review of her book ‘Green Air’ on this blog can be found here. You may also like to read a review at Aussie Reviews.

The Glasshouse is quite a dark tale, incorporating themes of mental illnes, perfection and paranoia. With pumpkin-coloured hair and freckles, Clara lives in a glasshouse, growing perfect pumpkins. Each of her pumpkins is identical and blemish free, a little like the fruits and vegetables which we find in our supermarkets. Clara has little contact with the outside world until she notices that other greenhouses,which aren’t so perfect, are encroaching on hers. Clara’s paranoia about her perfect pumpkins grows, until she speaks to a boy who shows her that pumpkins don’t need to be perfect to taste good and that the outside world isn’t as scary as it appears. The moral of this story appears to be that people who live in glasshouses SHOULD throw stones, as Clara picks up a stone to smash the windows of her own glasshouse. On it’s simplest level, it’s a story about making friends and taking risks but there is a complicated sub-text beneath the pumpkins.

Thompson’s beatiful illustrations of pumpkins adorn each page, from the early pages with seed germinating, to the final page with pumpkin flowers and curling tendrils. There are lots of opportunities to link to seed growing experiments the requirements of living things. Clara’s pumpkins need light, warmth and fertiliser and we can see the lifecycles of plants with flowers and fruits. I could also see discussion opportunites for what greenhouses do and why they are used, which in turn leads to discussion of the green house effect. It might also be interesting to compare the appearance/taste of fruits and vegetables purchased from supermarkets compared with those from a local farmers’ market or home grown.

There are comprehension questions on the publisher’s website here and a number of activities which touch on other KLA areas, not just science. There are facts such as pumpkins are monoecious, which means they produce both male and female flowers on the same plant.There are also references to different types of gardens/gardening such as hydroponics and vertical gardens.

National Curriculum Links

Biological sciences (Foundation)

Living things have basic needs, including food and water

recognising the needs of living things in a range of situations such as pets at home, plants in the garden or plants and animals in bushland

Biological sciences (Year 1)

Living things have a variety of external features

recognising common features of animals such as head, legs and wings

describing the use of animal body parts for particular purposes such as moving and feeding

Living things live in different places where their needs are met

exploring different habitats in the local environment such as the beach, bush and backyard

recognising that different living things live in different places such as land and water

Biological sciences (Year 2)

Living things grow, change and have offspring similar to themselves

representing personal growth and changes from birth

recognising that living things have predictable characteristics at different stages of development

exploring different characteristics of life stages in animals such as egg, caterpillar and butterfly

Biological sciences (Year 4)

Living things have life cycles

making and recording observations of living things as they develop through their life cycles

describing the stages of life cycles of different living things such as insects, birds, frogs and flowering plants

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About this blog:

Hi and welcome!

I'm a children's author and secondary science teacher.

I'm interested in linking literacy and primary science through using picture books as a starting point in enquiry learning. I'll be looking for links with the Australian national curriculum and providing teachers and home educators with a useful resource with links to supporting material

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